In case PC gamers weren't feeling neglected enough by Ubisoft by the recent PC-only delays of Call of Juarez: The Cartel and From Dust, the official Twitter channel for the Driver franchise has today confirmed that the PC version of the upcoming Driver: San Francisco will require a "permanent internet connection" to play.

This means that not only do players need an active Internet connection to launch even the singleplayer component of the PC game, but that connection has to remain active for the entirety of play, as the game periodically "phones home" to authenticate the user, pausing the game if unsuccessful.

The conversational method is clearly an attempt to curb piracy, but remains very unpopular among gamers as it inconveniences legitimate owners while the games are almost always eventually cracked by pirate distributors anyway.

Other Ubisoft games such as Assassin's Creed 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction utilised this technology, but patches were released to remove the persistent check several months after launch.

Hehe, reminds me of the minute or so of un-skippable anti-piracy and copyright crap at the beginning of DVD's. Those who see it, aren't pirating it and those that pirate it, don't see it. Flawless.

After semi recently taking my PC to a place with no stable Internet connection. I have no love for games requiring permanent connections. And I won't buy a game for singleplayer which requires such DRM.

even if i were to buy it, which I would never do on principal, i'd probably still download the nocd/nointernets crack to play it anyway
someone will have a crack for it within days of release, like always

Because they think they can cash in on the latest fad in reboot titles.

It started off with Street Fighter 4 for fighting games and now its spreading over to other game genres and even other industries like the movies and even across the entire the world! maybe even across other plantes!

But seriously folks, the 1st driver on the ps1 was one of my favourite games of all time, at the time.

I hate this kind of thinking, Ive gone off before about SecuROM ruining gaming for me, GTAIV I bought legitimately, but secuROM would refuse to allow it to run, so I had to download a skidrow/reload version to play a game I actually bought, this has happened with so many games.

It also happened with BF-BC2 recently it started asking for the disk to play (got it from steam)

LOL, I own about 100 games, all legitimately purchased, and a large library of Bluray movies. I think I'll get this game illegally, play it and post my experiences on Ubisoft forums (probably telling them how much the game sucked!). They want to treat us gamers with disrespect, we'll treat them likewise! They need to be reminded that WE are the ones who are paying THEM!

Ubisoft just seems to be following the gaming industry playbook that's made the rounds at Bioware, EA and Sony lately on the most efficient way to piss off your customers.
Thank goodness the indie and mobile gaming scenes are taking off. PC gaming isn't dying, the majors are actively trying to kill it.